Utility of an oral diffusion sink (ODS) device for quantification of saliva corticosteroids in human subjects.

Measurement of cortisol by assay of single blood or saliva samples is inherently imprecise due to the episodic secretion of cortisol. In addition, assay of blood usually quantifies total cortisol, rather than separating free hormone, which is proportionately the much smaller fraction. Furthermore, the free fraction may be disproportionately higher in hypercortisolism. Urinary free cortisol is one measure that provides both a time integral and a focus on the free fraction, but it is inconvenient and prone to collection error in unsupervised ambulatory subjects. The Oral Diffusion Sink (ODS) apparatus takes up corticosteroids from saliva according to first-order kinetics and may provide a practical alternative. We assessed the utility of the ODS in a study of seven healthy volunteers admitted to the CRC for three days. Data on day two from 0700-1100 h and 1100-1500 h were compared between the ODS and three other means of assessing cortisol: urinary free cortisol (UFC), blood, and saliva. The subjects all tolerated wearing the ODS device without any complaint. High correlations were observed between ODS values vs. data for UFC, plasma, and saliva determinations. In summary, the ODS device was well tolerated and collected reliable corticosteroid data, and thus provides a new, non-invasive methodology for studies of HPA function in health and disease.

Antioxidant status and dietary lipid unsaturation modulate oxidative DNA damage.

High performance liquid chromatography with electrochemical detection (HPLC-EC) was used to measure 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG), a marker for oxidative DNA damage, in mammary gland isolated from tumor-bearing and tumor-free rats fed diets of varied fatty acid composition and vitamin E and selenium content. A method for tissue preparation and analysis is reported and a significant positive correlation shown between degree of unsaturation of dietary fatty acids and 8-OHdG concentration, regardless of antioxidant status. The increase in 8-OHdG concentration with greater fatty acid unsaturation was more pronounced in the absence of adequate dietary vitamin E and selenium. The implications of these data for defining the role of dietary lipid in the process of mammary carcinogenesis are discussed.

Plasma xanthophyll carotenoids correlate inversely with indices of oxidative DNA damage and lipid peroxidation.

Post hoc analysis of data obtained from a study designed to modulate oxidative damage by dietary intervention revealed consistently strong inverse correlations between plasma xanthophyll carotenoids and oxidative damage indices. Thirty-seven women participated in a 14-day dietary intervention that increased mean vegetable and fruit (VF) consumption to approximately 12 servings/day. An additional 10 subjects participated in an intervention that limited VF consumption to less than four servings per day. 8-Hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) in DNA isolated from peripheral lymphocytes and 8-OHdG excreted in urine were measured as indices of oxidative DNA damage. Lipid peroxidation was assessed by measuring 8-epiprostaglandin F2alpha (8-EPG) in urine. Plasma levels of selected carotenoids were also determined, with the intention of using a-carotene as a biochemical index of VF consumption. Urinary 8-OHdG and 8-EPG were measured by ELISA, and plasma carotenoids were measured by high performance liquid chromatography. Lymphocyte 8-OHdG was measured by reverse phase high performance liquid chromatography with electrochemical detection. We observed that the structurally related xanthophyll carotenoids, lutein and beta-cryptoxanthin, which occur in dissimilar botanical families, were consistently inversely associated with these oxidative indices. Statistically significant inverse correlations were observed between plasma lutein and/or beta-cryptoxanthin levels and lymphocyte 8-OHdG and urinary 8-EPG. Moreover, an inverse correlation was observed between change in plasma xanthophylls and change in lymphocyte 8-OHdG concentration that occurred during the course of the study. These data lead us to hypothesize that lutein and beta-cryptoxanthin serve as markers for the antioxidant milieu provided by plants from which they are derived. Whether these carotenoids are directly responsible for the observed antioxidant phenomena merits further investigation.

Time-integrated measurement of corticosteroids in saliva by oral diffusion sink technology.

Saliva, as a medium for assessing adrenocortical function in humans, has many advantages and a few distinct disadvantages. Interpretation of measurements of saliva cortisol is complicated by the contamination of saliva by steroid-binding proteins from blood plasma, enzyme activity in the salivary gland that converts cortisol to cortisone, and the amplification in saliva of the episodic fluctuations in systemic cortisol concentrations. We describe a new measurement technology that rejects artifacts from contamination of saliva by plasma protein, provides for measurement of both cortisol and cortisone, and integrates episodic fluctuations in concentration over a period of hours. This oral diffusion sink technology may greatly enhance the reliable interpretation of corticosteroid concentrations measured in saliva.

Effect of caloric restriction on pre-malignant and malignant stages of mammary carcinogenesis.

Caloric restriction has documented beneficial effects on numerous diseases including cancer, yet the mechanism(s) that accounts for these wide ranging benefits is unknown. Part of the difficulty in defining mechanisms has been the long-term nature of experimental protocols in which these beneficial effects have been observed and the inherent difficulty of investigating mechanisms in such studies. The experiments reported were designed: (1) to determine if caloric restriction would inhibit mammary carcinogenesis in a model for this disease process that is 35 days in duration; (2) to determine if progression from pre-malignant to malignant stages of mammary carcinogenesis was affected by caloric restriction; and (3) to explore whether the effects of caloric restriction were associated with changes in adrenal function. Mammary carcinogenesis was induced in female Sprague-Dawley rats by the i.p. administration of 1-methyl-1-nitrosourea (50 mg/kg body weight) at 21 days of age. Rats were randomized to one of four dietary treatment groups: ad libitum fed, or restriction of food intake to 90, 80 or 60% of the ad libitum intake. Rats were palpated for detection of mammary tumors and all mammary lesions excised at necropsy were histologically classified. Twenty-four-hour collections of urine were obtained at weekly intervals throughout the 35-day experiment. Urine was assayed for corticosterone by direct radioimmunoassay. Caloric restriction resulted in both a dose dependent prolongation of latency to palpable carcinomas (P < 0.01) and a reduction in final incidence of mammary cancer; the dose response was linear (P < 0.05). The percentage of pre-malignant mammary lesions in a group increased with increasing degree of caloric restriction, whereas the percentage of carcinomas decreased (P < 0.05). The level of cortical steroid increased linearly with increasing caloric restriction (P < 0.01) an effect that was not attenuated over time. Poisson regression analyses with the number of cancers per rat as the dependent variable, level of caloric restriction as the independent variable and urinary cortical steroid excretion as a co-variate were performed. These analyses indicated that the variation in cancers per rat, irrespective of the treatment group to which an animal was assigned, could be accounted for by urinary cortical steroid excretion (P<0.05); i.e. urinary cortical steroid excretion was an independent predictor of an animal's carcinogenic response. The data reported in this study support the use of a short term model to study the mechanism(s) by which caloric restriction inhibits mammary carcinogenesis and point to both a stage in the disease process, the conversion of pre-malignant to malignant cells, and a target tissue (adrenal gland) and chemical species (adrenal cortical steroid) that may be involved in mediating the protective effects of energy restriction. These data indicate the feasibility of identifying a chemical basis for the protective effect of caloric restriction that is independent of energy restriction per se and this, in turn, indicates that it may be possible to circumvent the practical problem of implementing a program of chronic energy restriction in human populations, yet still achieve the wide-ranging health benefits of such a program.

X-radiation induces 8-hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine formation in vivo in rat mammary gland DNA.

Ionizing radiation is a carcinogen that induces oxidative DNA damage. 8-Hydroxy-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) is a relatively abundant, mutagenic lesion that is widely regarded as a reliable index of oxidative DNA damage. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of X-radiation on levels of 8-OHdG in the context of an experimental model for breast cancer in which chronic radiation exposure has been shown to be carcinogenic in Sprague-Dawley rats. A secondary objective of this study was to determine if the use of phenol during DNA isolation affected the concentration of 8-OHdG subsequently measured. Our results indicate that a profoundly carcinogenic dose of radiation induced a small but significant increase in 8-OHdG concentration in mammary gland DNA, and that the use of a phenol-based versus a salt-based method of DNA isolation had no significant impact on the levels of 8-OHdG detected in either control or irradiated tissue.

Effect of excess dietary iron on the promotion stage of 1-methyl-1-nitrosourea-induced mammary carcinogenesis: pathogenetic characteristics and distribution of iron.

The effect of feeding a 10-fold excess of dietary iron on the promotion stage of MNU-induced mammary carcinogenesis was investigated. Rats fed excess iron in the diet had more mammary carcinomas than rats fed the recommended level of iron. A significantly greater proportion of carcinomas in rats fed the excess iron diet had the normal Ha-ras gene rather than the mutated form (G-->A transition mutation in codon 12). In non-tumor bearing rats, mammary epithelial cells in lobules were the primary site of iron accumulation. However, in mammary carcinomas, a shift in the distribution of iron from the epithelial cells to the stroma was noted. Iron was predominantly found in tumor stroma; malignant epithelial cells failed to accumulate comparable levels of iron. These observations indicate that in the presence of excess iron there is an increase in the number of mammary carcinomas that do not bear the mutant Ha-ras gene. Whether changes in the distribution of iron within the mammary gland contribute to the altered pathogenetic characteristics of these tumors is being investigated.

The efficacy of conjugated linoleic acid in mammary cancer prevention is independent of the level or type of fat in the diet.

The objective of the present study was to investigate whether the anticarcinogenic activity of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) is affected by the amount and composition of dietary fat consumed by the host. Because the anticancer agent of interest is a fatty acid, this approach may provide some insight into its mechanism of action, depending on the outcome of these fat feeding experiments. For the fat level experiment, a custom formulated fat blend was used that simulates the fatty acid composition of the US diet. This fat blend was present at 10, 13.3, 16.7 or 20% by weight in the diet. For the fat type experiment, a 20% (w/w) fat diet containing either corn oil (exclusively) or lard (predominantly) was used. Mammary cancer prevention by CLA was evaluated using the rat dimethylbenz[a]anthracene model. The results indicated that the magnitude of tumor inhibition by 1% CLA was not influenced by the level or type of fat in the diet. It should be noted that these fat diets varied markedly in their content of linoleate. Fatty acid analysis showed that CLA was incorporated predominantly in mammary tissue neutral lipids, while the increase in CLA in mammary tissue phospholipids was minimal. Furthermore, there was no evidence that CLA supplementation perturbed the distribution of linoleate or other fatty acids in the phospholipid fraction. Collectively these carcinogenesis and biochemical data suggest that the cancer preventive activity of CLA is unlikely to be mediated by interference with the metabolic cascade involved in converting linoleic acid to eicosanoids. The hypothesis that CLA might act as an antioxidant was also examined. Treatment with CLA resulted in lower levels of mammary tissue malondialdehyde (an end product of lipid peroxidation), but failed to change the levels of 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine (a marker of oxidatively damaged DNA). Thus while CLA may have some antioxidant function in vivo in suppressing lipid peroxidation, its anticarcinogenic activity cannot be accounted for by protecting the target cell DNA against oxidative damage. The finding that the inhibitory effect of CLA maximized at 1% (regardless of the availability. of linoleate in the diet) could conceivably point to a limiting step in the capacity to metabolize CLA to some active product(s) which is essential for cancer prevention.